Then we have the awkward fact that the thirst for travel inspired by empire has not necessarily made us tolerant of immigrants who themselves came from the empire, a tendency that podcaster Helen Zaltzman picked up on when she tweeted: ‘Britain is hostile to people arriving in boats because Britain knows what happened when Britain arrived in other countries in boats.’ The legacies of empire run deep and are sometimes contradictory. The pulling down of statues may have created the popular idea that one can erase or retain the values of empire by pulling monuments down or keeping them up, but
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immigration
